As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) celebrates the ‘poaching’ of Sujay Vikhe-Patil, son of senior Congressman Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has fielded sitting legislator from Ahmednagar, Sangram Jagtap, to take him on.
Sujay Vikhe-Patil defected to the BJP after the NCP allegedly refused to leave the Ahmednagar Lok Sabha seat for its ally, the Congress.
In deciding to field Mr. Jagtap, the NCP has not only matched Mr. Sujay’s “youth appeal”, but has also put the regional BJP-Shiv Sena leadership in a fix.
Mr. Jagtap’s father-in-law is BJP legislator Shivajirao Kardile, a local strongman with a history of crime. Both Mr. Jagtap and Mr. Kardile were implicated, and briefly arrested, for the murders of two Sena leaders which occurred in the backdrop of a bypoll to the Ahmednagar Municipal Corporation (AMC) in April last year. The double murders have cast a long shadow over the politics of Ahmednagar, complicating local equations and hardening inter-clan, and inter-party rivalries before the general elections. It has firmly pitted the local Sena leadership against the Mr. Kardile-led BJP faction, and against the NCP.
Despite belonging to different political parties, the Kardiles and the Jagtaps are together said to dominate the politics of Ahmednagar, especially at the taluka and civic body levels. “The question is whether Mr. Kardile’s BJP faction will covertly support Mr. Jagtap and work against Mr. Sujay. The NCP has played a smart move here,” a political observer said.
The BJP and the Sena contested the Ahmednagar Municipal Corporation (AMC) polls separately, and the latter emerged as the single-largest party, winning 22 of the 68 seats. However, the BJP, which had emerged third, forged an alliance with the NCP to seize control of the AMC and elected a Mayor from the BJP.
The move shocked the Congress, which had jointly contested the AMC poll with the NCP.
Despite denials by NCP chief Sharad Pawar and the party’s State president Jayant Patil, it was widely believed that Mr. Jagtap had a hand in effecting the alliance with the BJP.
Now, as the BJP has formed an alliance with the Sena before the Lok Sabha polls, it remains to be seen if the Sena Ahmednagar leadership will work with the BJP led by Mr. Kardile, or if Mr. Kardile will fight against Mr. Jagtap.